What’s your opinion about Spark eSIM?

[James Oliver]

Hi all, My Wife and I are travelling to New Zealand this December and we are making the budget. We are confused which eSIM we should take when arriving at Auckland Airport. 2Degrees or Spark. Do anyone have experience with Spark eSIM plan for tourist?

[Allen Denton]

I have a tip for the people with the iPhone 14 and other phones without sim trays, or people who are wondering about eSIMs in general. Spark NZ’s website doesn’t really mention it concisely so I can see how it would potentially be confusing. I know I searched eSIM in this group and all over the web when I first got here, and couldn’t find a very definitive answer when it came to the travel plan, so I’m hoping if someone uses the search function in the future they may find this post. Google makes it out to seem like Vodafone is the only eSIM company but that is simply not true. Travel plan eSIM may also be good keywords to find this post.

Alas, the tip: Spark CAN set you up with a prepaid travel plan on eSIM with any unlocked phone that supports it. Just take your phone to the Spark shop at the airport, or any Spark shop anywhere, and they will set you up. Only took about 10 minutes from start to finish for them to get me going. I got the 100GB plan and it has been instrumental in not only saving money on data, but also being able to call my hotels and activity guides with a local number.

If you do end up doing going the eSIM route with your current phone and you’re using iPhone, just remember to go to Settings > Cellular > and go under eSIMs and then click into the phone number that you use at home and toggle off the “Turn On This Line”; otherwise the phone will connect to both your travel line, and your home line; at the same time. When you leave NZ, you can just delete the NZ phone number, toggle your old number back on and voila it’s back to normal. You can also go back in and toggle on your old number periodically throughout your trip, if you want to check your text messages or something.

Also, if you have an unlocked iPhone 11 or later, even if you have a physical SIM card, you can also use an eSIM in addition to your physical SIM card and have the ability to toggle either line. Could be useful, as swapping physical SIMs is kinda dangerous IMO, because if you lose your home SIM then you’re kinda doomed until you get home to get a replacement. They’re really tiny too so I could imagine it happening.

Can’t comment on the Android experience with this, but maybe someone else with Android experience will eventually comment here. I imagine its similar enough. Can’t comment on other carriers either as I haven’t tried them.
Anyway hope this helps someone, happy planning and happy travels!

[Catherine Glass]

We had read to get an eSIM from spark at the airport for our phones. Just want to tell everyone our mistake- we purchased a plan, then as they were helping us install it, we realized our phones were “locked” and we couldn’t use a SIM card. So if there’s anyone like us who are paying monthly installments on your phone… your phone is locked as well. Of course Spark would not let us return the sim, so in the airport we had to pay off our phones (yikes that was a lot) then we have to wait 48 hours to request an “unlock” code, then we can use the sims. Very frustrating mistake on our part especially after flying all night and being exhausted! I hope others can learn from our mistake and that this will be the only glitch in our trip!

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